Mouse Study may Point Immune System Response in PTSD

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – Chronic stress could prime the immune system to react to a single stressor later, potentially shedding a light on a biological system behind post-traumatic stress disorder.

Researchers from the Ohio State University examined the responses from chronically stressed mice, and found after the mice had recovered from the stress, a single stressor 24 days later quickly returned the mice to a state of chronic stress. They also found immune cells which act as part of the body’s response to stress stayed ready in the mice’s spleens. The extreme response to a brief stressor is similar to reactions in humans with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We haven’t proffered that there is a cellular component to PTSD, but there very well might be,” senior author John Sheridan, professor of oral biology and associate director of Ohio State’s Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, was quoted as saying. “And it’s very possible that it sits in the periphery as we’ve been describing in the mouse.”